[Desktop_architects] Re: Portland: How to fix this situation

Bryce Harrington bryce at osdl.org
Fri Dec 9 23:23:10 PST 2005


On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 11:00:32PM +0100, Otto Wyss wrote:
> > I expect Wine will only be needed during the transition from Windows 
> to Linux.
> > Once Linux achieves sufficient market share, app vendors will begin 
> delivering
> > the Linux apps we need.  Wine will still be needed thereafter, just like
> > Cobol is needed today, but it won't be used for running new apps.
> >
> I think so too but there will be always some Windows-Only applications 
> which Wine is the only solutions. IMO this will always be the case in 
> the professional environment, so Wine should concentrate there. There's 
> mostly a sysadmin around for installation, etc. but the application 
> itself will be used by an average user.

I'm sure this is going to sound cheeky, but in my opinion the perfect
role for Wine in enabling the Linux Desktop is games.

I suspect Wine developers would prefer to focus on more high brow (and
higher income) things like photoshop, quicken, and the like, and
certainly there is a lot of sense to that.  But it's within the realm of
feasibility that either open source alternatives could be developed, or
through efforts such as the Portland Project, those ISVs may be able to
port them to Linux.  Games are another story.

Plus, while I'm not a heavy Wine user, running Windows games seems to be
the area where Wine tends to come up in conversation the most.  I bet
that if Wine were able to make the claim that it can run every major
game released within the last X years, that would singlehandedly
kill off an entire category of reasons why people don't switch, and
maybe gain Wine a lot more user/developers to boot.  ;-)

> PS. is it possible to just be subscribed to this group? The OSDL 
> membership is rather difficult to get and answering through the web 
> isn't much better.

Yes, this list is open, you should be able to subscribe to it just like
any mailing list; if not, email John Cherry for assistance.

Bryce




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